SAWYER — CLIMATIC CHANGE IN ILLINOIS. 259 



forming a series of artificial ponds and lakes, at short intervals, 

 an immediate change for the better would be noticed in seasona- 

 ble showers during the summer months : to which may be added 

 the important consideration that this plan is cheaper, and assur- 

 edly much more effective than any other that has been suggested. 

 Two men with a plow, road-scraper, and a span of horses or 

 mules, could make two good ponds per week, or at least twenty- 

 four during the season ; consequently a fair trial of this plan would 

 cost but little, and might prove beneficial to the whole country. 



The change in the climate of Illinois cannot certainly be attri- 

 buted to the destruction of forest trees, at least in the middle and 

 northern part of the State, for they have increased since the time 

 when, with every annual burning of the prairie, their front lines 

 were scorched and beaten back — the ground, in time, becoming 

 prairie, and assisting in the wholesale destruction of the life it had 

 nourished from its bosom. Now the timber is encroaching on the 

 prairie, and to-day the area of woodland is greater than it was 

 twenty years ago, for in almost every fence-corner in the prairie 

 you will find a vigorous young tree growing ; the owners of the 

 land have planted shade and fruit trees ; a beautiful line of dark- 

 green marks the useful osage-orange hedge that" incloses, divides, 

 and subdivides its owner's land, where, a few years ago, not a 

 tree was to be seen within the field of human vision ; and the mo- 

 notony while crossing these plains was unbroken, save when the 

 graceful deer came bounding across your path, or the sneaking 

 wolf, at some safe distance from his enemy, viewed your passage 

 across his domain. It was a weary, unpleasant, dreaded journey ; 

 and no mariner ever strained his weary, anxious eyes to discover 

 the beacon-light which assured him that his reckoning was cor- 

 rect, than the pilot of a "prairie schooner" watched the dull, 

 leaden horizon recede until the blue outline which marks the 

 advanced guard of the timbered land met his view ; and the glad 

 shout of "there 's a tree !" is only surpassed by the loud, cheering 

 cry of the sailor, when, after a lengthy voyage, he first discovers 

 land. 



Inquiry and personal observation have convinced me that the 

 removal of trees from around a "living spring" of water rather 

 increases the flow than otherwise ; in no instance has it dimin- 

 ished. One close to my place fills its little channel just as of old. 



